


As the Sun is to the Moon

by love_u_always_mom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_u_always_mom/pseuds/love_u_always_mom
Summary: Steve is to Bucky as the light is to the dark. What happens when that light goes out?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the idea that HYDRA never had to brainwash or wipe Bucky, that all they had to do was tell him Steve was dead.

Bucky had always known he was a dark man. Even before he could call himself a man, he had known, felt it in inside his soul.

 

Steve was the spark, the light, the one who gave him a heart, because Steve was the polar opposite of Bucky’s darkness. Steve always denied it, citing his constant fights as proof that he wasn't the unfailingly good person Bucky said he was, but that didn't mean anything. Because the reasons behind the fights were what mattered. Steve didn't go up and punch a guy because he felt like it. He went up and punched the asshole grabbing a lady when she didn't want to be grabbed, or the group of heathens pelting Mrs. Helens with rotten fruit as she hobbled down the street with two canes.

 

Steve dismissed all this when Bucky confessed it to him, with an “of course you're not a bad person Buck,” followed by a “who the hell put that into your head?”

 

Bucky just shook his head, unable to explain. But in his heart he knew. Steve’s soul was as light as his soft blond hair, and Bucky’s? Well, it turned out that his own hair was just as fitting.

* * *

He thought that maybe Steve finally began to see what he meant, in the harshness of war with death abound and bullets flying. He knew Steve could see the disconnected coldness when one of his bullets blew through a skull, a heart, a liver. When the victim lay writhing and hollering, there was a haunted look in Steve’s eyes that more than once guided him to sit at the side of the fallen as they drew their final breaths, while his own eyes reflected nothing at all.

 

The others saw it too, he knew. But they just put it down to the war, listed it in the same category as their own callousness. Because war did that to people, because they'd all lose their minds if it didn't, unless you were Steve. Even in Steve, though, he could detect a flicker of madness resultant of such a good man forced to do bad things. Bucky had been born to this, born to be a killer. But not Steve.

 

Not his Steve.

* * *

 Bucky choked on grief as he read the headline, fighting his voice to keep from shouting his pain, not wanting to give them the satisfaction.

 

He hadn't yet, even as they peeled his skin back from the flesh it protected and snapped his bones to track their healing after forcing fire into his blood. He had not yet screamed nor let out a single whimper, refusing to let them know they could hurt him.

 

But this, here they had found his weakness, or perhaps they had known it all along and simply had the luck of being able to exploit it.

 

He wished he could accuse them of fabrication, of spinning a tale and having a fake paper printed for his benefit, but he knew it was real. If it was a tale out of their imaginations it would be one of their own victorious defeat of America’s Hero, a fiction spun of a daring fight that the dear captain had not been able to keep up.

 

But this, the sacrificial crash of a plane headed to destroy New York? That was so true, so authentically _Steve_ that there was nothing in him that could deny it.

 

Steve was gone, dead, frozen and alone in an enemy ship buried in ice where no one would find him, would ever lay him to rest in the manner he so deserved.

 

He realized then that he was sobbing and forced himself to stop. Crying would never bring him back, blubbering would not ease the blackness slowly spreading out from his heart.

 

The light was gone. The spark had gone out. His heart had frozen over.

 

The Winter Soldier threw the paper down on the cold, cement floor of his cell.

* * *

 The Soldier had mastered not caring, had perfected locking away his previous life deep in his head so deftly that it rarely came to his awareness any longer. He did now what he was best at, what he realized during the war what must be the only reason he was put here. Not by God, he had stopped believing in God when he had stopped believing in love and happiness, back in nineteen-forty-five.

 

He was a killer, through and through. Twenty and some years ago they had given him a final test, one that he had almost failed, hesitating before the metal fist flew forward and met its mark with the subtle crack of a skull.

 

The only thing he thought of these days were his missions, and each fine detail required to complete them. He immersed himself in the files, his orders and his mark's routine, their habits and tics. He cared not for anyone around him nor the world they lived in.

 

Therefore he wasn't aware, didn't know as he fled a small DC apartment, was pursued through buildings and over rooftops, that everything he thought he knew was about to come crashing down.

 

Two people ran after him as he made to disappear, a woman he had seen and a man he had not. He remembered the woman, Natalia, with fiery hair and a personality to match. How her companion kept up with him, and how she kept up with her companion, was all a mystery to him, but one he didn't care enough about to solve.

 

He ran out onto a final roof and heard shattering glass behind him, heard the subtle sound of air shifting around a heavy object flying through it and put his metal hand out to stop it, sending it flying back to its owner before its image was processed by his brain.

 

He had no eyes for the redhead with her gun trained on him, nor the mystified look in Steve’s eyes as the force of his shield pushed him back.

 

The Soldier had frozen as something deep inside him fell back into place, a warmth spreading out from his heart through his limbs as his brain fought with what couldn't be possible. The redhead, knowing something was off as she had never once seen him show any inclination to falter, held her fire.

 

The shock was all encompassing, making a rapid spread through each minute cell of his body, locking him in place with no breaths and twice the beats of his heart. Opposite him both Steve and Natalia, a dim part of his brain _needed_ to hear that story, stood nearly as still as he while his mind wrestled itself. Launched from the deepest cavern of his memory came an image, a dank cell and a weathered newspaper lying on the floor. He was looking at a ghost, the very one which haunted the back of his mind to whence it was banished seven decades previously. And yet, as though time and space had never existed at all, hear he stood.

 

Steve.

 

One foot fell uncertainly forward.

 

_Steve._

 

The other followed, more sure than the last.

 

“Steve!”

 

At his hoarse, strangled cry the shield dropped from Steve’s hands in shock as he bounded forward, launching himself at the shaken blond and wrapping his legs tightly around familiar slender hips.

 

Even with a moment's warning to brace himself Steve had very nearly been knocked flat, but there was no hesitation in his arms as they crossed behind his back, holding so tightly it was painful. He choked on the sobs emanating from deep in his chest, hyper aware of each tear rolling from his eyes, each heartbeat as it pushed hot blood through his veins, every inch of his skin currently in contact with Steve.

 

Nothing made sense, but he didn't care. Somehow Steve was right here, warm, solid, real and _alive_. Later there would be time to ask how it was possible, how he was here after so many years that he had almost lost track, but right now he couldn't form a sentence. He could feel the burning stare of the woman standing next to them, could almost hear her wondering whether she should shoot him anyway.

 

“Ради него Наталья, не спустить курок.” (For his sake, Natalia, do not pull that trigger.)

 

He felt Steve tense at the sound of mysterious words of an unfamiliar cadence issuing from his lips, but ignored it. He didn’t have it in him to explain right now.

 

Her response came with unsurprising coldness. “Объяснить.” (Explain.)

 

“Сержант Джеймс Барнс из Бруклина, Нью-Йорк. Призван в армию Соединенных Штатов весной девятьсот сорок три.” (Sergeant James Barnes of Brooklyn, New York. Drafted into the United States Army spring of nineteen-forty-three.)

 

He heard a shocked breath huff from her lips, followed by the soft sound of a pistol being returned to its holster. Slowly he regained control of his breathing, his tears, and his heart rate slowed. It was with a certain measure of reluctance that he untangled his legs from Steve’s hips and made them to bear their own weight once more.

 

His arms remained around Steve’s shoulders, however, and with their foreheads touching he gently aligned their faces to allow for the lightest brush of their lips.

 

“They told me you were dead,” he not quite whispered, “and then nothing mattered anymore.”

 

Steve’s arms only tightened, unsteady breaths beginning to shake his wide chest.

 

“The silence was deafening without you,” he managed to choke back.

 

He pulled back to look at Steve, searching his eyes as he spoke. “In that bar, right after you pulled me out of that godforsaken base, you promised me that when the war was over we would be done.”

 

It wasn’t a question, and yet it was. For Steve, there was only one answer.

 

He turned to the silent redhead who had been watching their reunion with a sharply cautious gaze.

 

“Natasha?”

 

_Natasha?_

 

She gave what only those closest to her could interpret as a sad smile. “Don’t question any glitches you see in the direct deposit system,” came her cryptic answer.

 

He smiled, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself, Nat.”

 

With that, he reached around and took hold of icy metal. “C’mon, Buck. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations provided by Yandex because word from those fluent in Russian is that Google Translate is awful for Russian.
> 
> You can find Stucky feels, pictures of my daughter, and other randomness here.
> 
> Not only do I love reviews, they're the only thing that tell me what I do well and what needs work, so pretty please leave me one!
> 
> Epilogue/Part 2 is possible if enough people tell me they want it.


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